Normal-Sized Guys Who Are Freakishly Strong Tell You How They Did It

The following three men look totally non-descript—they’re not big or small, simply average sized.

But in the weight room they’re anything but ordinary. They’re freaks of fitness with the ability to perform truly amazing feats of strength. Think of them as Clark Kents, who—when it’s time to lift—morph into Super Men. Follow their strength secrets and you, too, can become super human.

You’ll never get strong if you push through lower body lifts with noodle legs, and hold the weight with the same grip you use to shake an old woman’s hand.

“The common denominator between people who are ridiculously strong but might not look it is that they know how to create tension throughout their entire body when they lift,” says Davidson, Ph.D. training director at Peak Performance in New York City.

Getting tense “works” due to a phenomenon called irradiation. “When your muscles are really tight, your bones are held in place to a higher degree,” says Davidson. “That makes your brain feel more comfortable to exert more total force during your lift. So it basically flips a switch that turns on more strength.”

Your move: Whenever you hold a weight, grip it as if you’re trying to turn the bar or handle to dust. And also imagine pressing the floor away from you with your heels and arches. “Those two tricks trigger the irradiation phenomena in your upper and lower halves, helping you exert more strength.”

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Mix It UpName: David DellanaveWeight: 190Feats of strength: Holds the World Record for the Jefferson Deadlift (605 pounds); can perform a bent press —which is a variation of a single-arm shoulder press—with a load that's equivalent to his bodyweight

Powerlifting dogma says that to get incredibly strong in a specific lift, you should attack it with everything you have just once a week. “I think that works for guys at the elite level,” says Dellanave, who owns Movement Minneapolis. “But for the average guy, I think actually doing the opposite is what can work best.”

“I lift very frequently—five or six days a week—focusing on the lift I’m training for but also a ton of other lifts that build strength in many different directions and planes of motion,” says Dellanave. For example, when building up to his record Jefferson deadlift, Dellanave also did exercises like front squats, lateral lunges, one-handed deadlifts, and strongman stone lifts. (For more info on the benefits of strongman training, read The Old School Way to Get Ripped.)

And although a common rule is that sets comprised of heavier loads and lower reps is what builds strength without size, Dellanave has found that many guys respond well to higher volume.

“When I was training to set the record for the Jefferson deadlift, I definitely did one-repetition max lifts,” says Dellanave. “But I also did very high-rep sets. For example, one day I put 405 pounds on the bar and deadlifted it 100 times in 30 minutes. It was awful, but it made me stronger.”

High-rep lifting is what many trainers advocate for putting on muscle, and Dellanave agrees that the method can help you put on mass—but only if you’re eating excess of calories. “I just eat a normal amount, which maintains my weight. I never stuff my face, so I gain strength without size,” he says.

“Let’s say you’re trying to build up your deadlift,” says Dellanave. "One day you might do 5 sets of just a couple heavy reps of the lift. Another day you might do sets of 20 reps, and the other day you’d do a completely different deadlift pattern with reps somewhere in between. Days that you aren’t deadlifting, do exercises that you can progress in and make you generally stronger, like farmers walks, rows, pull-ups, and grip work.”

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Own the WeightName: Andy SpeerWeight: 175Feats of strength: Completed the Beast Tamer Challenge, where you do a single-arm press, single-leg squat, and a pullup with a 106-pound kettlebell

“Many of the great strength coaches say that ‘strength is a skill,’” says Speer, 2014 winner of Men's Health Next Top Trainer. “What they mean is that strength is something that you really need to practice and hone.”

So to conquer the Beast Tamer Challenge, Speer began his first week of training as if he was approaching each exercise for the first time. “For example, with overhead pressing I started with a 16-kilogram kettlebell (35 pounds), and I did ladders three days a week where I’d do up to 75 reps on each arm,” says Speer. “In that week I mastered the movement with that lighter weight. Then the next week I went up the next kettlebell size, which is only an 8-pound increase, and mastered the movement with that weight. I slowly moved up the weights until I could press the 48-kilogram bell.”

Speer did that until he was pressing a weight three times as heavy as the one he began his training with.

The reason that easy-does-it strategy works: You not only allow your muscles to slowly adapt, but your technique becomes flawless. “Developing the skill of doing that movement with a lighter weight is vital to being able to duplicate the movement under heavy load,” says Speer. “You need strength and technique—you can’t have one without the other.”

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Your move: Try a weekly kettlebell pressing ladder program. “I recommend you do the medium day Monday, light day Wednesday, and heavy day Friday so you have time to recover between days,” says Speer.

Start with a 12-kilogram kettlebell. Do one rep with your right arm, switch hands and do a rep with your left arm. Immediately switch hands (don’t set down the bell) and do two reps with your right arm, then switch and do two reps with your left arm. Continue adding one rep until you’ve done five sequential reps with each arm. That’s one set. Rest 90-120 seconds between sets.

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